Dame Jenni: My anger over the BBC’s pay gap

DAMe Jenni Murray has told of her fury at the huge pay gap between herself and the BBC’s ‘younger, less experienced’ presenters.

in a blistering piece for today’s Daily Mail, the long- serving woman’s hour host, who left the show this week after 33 years, opens up on the ‘more than infuriating’ pay gap.

Dame Jenni, 70, says she made the decision to leave her BBC job a year ago because she wanted to be ‘free of the leash’ that had caused her to be ‘cancelled’.

She describes confrontations with the corporation after she expressed her views on transgender issues, and how she was barred from covering the election because of remarks she made on Brexit.

even after she was given a pay rise, she was still paid less than men ‘who had carried out similar work in earlier years’.

Dame Jenni, pictured, pointed to the long list of senior bosses on six-figure salaries whose roles appeared to have ‘precious little to do with broadcasting’.

She and fellow woman’s hour presenter, Jane Garvey, who i s also leaving the show, did not appear on the recent list of stars paid more than £150,000. Radio 2 breakfast show presenter Zoe Ball, by contrast, was paid £ 1.36million – even though her programme shed a million listeners. Dame Jenni, who will be writing a regular column for the Mail starting next week, was ‘shocked’ by the BBC’s response after she wrote an article about trans issues, which led to her receiving violent threats.

She reveals she was ‘roundly ticked off publicly’ and told she could not chair any discussions ‘on the trans question’. Dame Jenni says that her article had ‘merely asked’ trans activists to acknowledge t he difference between sex and gender, and ‘respect our right to safe single-sex spaces’ as well as drop the ‘nonsensical’ description of ‘cis women’.

She adds that new director-general tim Davie, who is clamping down on BBC staff ’s social media use, should have no fear of the twitter mob if they try to bring down ‘his greatest broadcasters’.